The Lawfare Podcast

For the podcast’s annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including:Which sphere of influence is Western Europe in today?What should we make of President Trump's lawsuit against BBC?After nearly a year of the Trump Administration, how do you view the record of Attorney General Merrick Garland?What does the military campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers tell us about checks and balances within the U.S. system around the use of military force (or lack thereof)?With the escalating rhetoric in the Caribbean, what lessons should we be keeping in mind from the lead-up to the Iraq War?What can be done to reverse Americans' tolerance for the slide towards illiberal democracy?And importantly, is Ben's martial arts challenge to Putin still on?For object lessons, our listeners really came through! Blake recommends a couple of coffee table books right up Tyler’s alley: “Building Stories” by Alastair Philip Wiper and "Closure: The Final Days of the Waterford Bicycle Factory" by Tucker and Anna Schwinn. Keenan points out a good companion listen to this podcast in NPR’s Sources and Methods. Liz really embraces the variety show that is “object lessons,” introducing us to Danylo Yavhusishyn—a.k.a., Aonishiki—a Ukrainian-born sumo wrestler, hyping Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as her Game of the Year, waxing poetic about The Sun Eater book series, and log-rolling her work on the Final Fantasy TCG. Speaking of variety shows, Lisa spotlights the Live from New York: The Lorne Michaels Collection exhibition at UT Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. And Riley asks the crew about their top fiction recommendations for 2026. Tune in to find out what they are!And thank goodness, that’s it for 2025! But don’t worry, Rational Security and the whole Lawfare team will be back with you in the new year to help make sense of what’s to come in national security in 2026!To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

Senior Editor Michael Feinberg and Tom Brzozowski, formerly of the Justice Department, sit down to talk over recent changes set in motion by the White House and Justice Department with respect to domestic terrorism investigations and prosecutions, and sound a warning from history at how these changes hearken back to pre-Church Committee practices.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

In this episode, Ariane Tabatabai, Scott R. Anderson, and Loren Voss discuss the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026. They take stock of how Congress is reasserting itself vis-a-vis the Trump administration on matters related to the national defense, as well as the NDAA’s key provisions. Relevant links:National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026United States Senate Committee on Armed Services Executive Summary of the 2026 NDAA“Senate passes defense bill that defies Trump and forces sharing of boat strike videos,” by Connor O’Brien on Politico, December 17, 2025“Inside Trump’s Second-Term National Security Strategy,” by Loren Voss on Lawfare, December 19, 2025To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

From March 6, 2024: Executive branch constraints and the posture of the media have shifted in significant ways over the past two decades. Lyrissa Lidsky and Christina Koningisor, law professors at the University of Florida and the University of California San Francisco, respectively, argue in a forthcoming law review article that these changes—including the erosion of certain post-Watergate reforms and the decline of local news—have created a First Amendment disequilibrium. They contend that the twin assumptions of the press’s power to extract information and check government authority on the one hand, and the limitations on executive branch power on the other, that undergird First Amendment jurisprudence no longer hold, leaving the press at a significant First Amendment disadvantage. Lawfare Research Fellow Matt Gluck spoke with Lidsky and Koningisor about the current state of First Amendment jurisprudence, the ways in which the press used to be stronger, executive branch power on the federal and state levels, how the authors think our current First Amendment architecture should change, and more.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

From January 2, 2025: You called in with your questions, and Lawfare contributors have answers! Benjamin Wittes, Kevin Frazier, Quinta Jurecic, Eugenia Lostri, Alan Rozenshtein, Scott R. Anderson, Natalie Orpett, Amelia Wilson, Anna Bower, and Roger Parloff addressed questions on everything from presidential pardons to the risks of AI to the domestic deployment of the military.Thank you for your questions. And as always, thank you for listening.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

Every year, Lawfare publishes a retrospective of the year that passed. Today, we’re pleased to bring you an audio debrief of that article, The Year That Was: 2025, which you can read in full on our website starting December 31.Lawfare is focused on producing timely, rigorous, and non-partisan analysis of “hard national security choices.” And this year, that work was—to use an expression as tired as we are—like drinking from a firehose. We did our best to keep up. We published more than 1,000 articles, podcasts, videos, research papers, and primary source documents. We did livestream round-ups and rapid-response videos. We produced five different podcasts and an investigative video series. We built data visualizations and trackers to make sense of complicated unfolding events. You can find all that and more for free on our website, lawfaremedia.org.It’s impossible to capture everything that happened in 2025 in the world of national security. But here’s what stood out to the Lawfare team—and what they have to say about. In this episode, you’ll hear from Executive Editor Natalie Orpett on Lawfare’s work in 2025 and from Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes on The Situation. You’ll hear from Senior Editors Anna Bower on DOGE, Roger Parloff on the Alien Enemies Act, Molly Roberts on politicization of the Justice Department, Eric Columbus on impoundments, Scott R. Anderson on war powers, and Kevin Frazier on AI and the states. You’ll hear from Public Interest Fellows Loren Voss on domestic deployments of the military, and Ariane Tabatabai on foreign policy. You’ll hear from our Managing Editor, Tyler McBrien, on our narrative podcast series, Escalation. You’ll hear from Associate Editors Katherine Pompilio on the Jan. 6 pardons and Olivia Manes on rolling back internal checks at the Justice Department. You’ll hear from our Fellow Jakub Kraus on AI, and you’ll hear from Contributing Editor Renée DiResta on election integrity capacity.And that’s just a sampling of Lawfare’s work.It’s The Year That Was: 2025. We’ll see you next year.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

From October 18, 2017: If you were unsure about whether your hosts are geeks, this episode will help settle the question. But before we get to what Professors Chesney and Vladeck think they know but don’t really, here’s the stuff they actually do know something about!First, the travel ban. Buckle up, there’s a new nationwide TRO, out of Hawaii, enjoining enforcement of most of Travel Ban 3.0.Second, a double-shot of the Nashiri military commissions case. The Supreme Court denied cert., seemingly paving the way for that case to roll forward. But not so fast–all the civilian defense attorneys, including their death-penalty expert, have just quit, citing ethical quandaries arising from alleged government surveillance of attorney-client communications.Third, and speaking of surveillance, the Supreme Court did grant cert. in the Microsoft-Ireland spat, which raises the question whether a “(d) order” under the Stored Communications Act can compel a company in the U.S. to produce data that is within the company’s control but stored on a server overseas.Fourth, and staying with the technology & statutes theme, there’s a fascinating “hack back” bill now pending in Congress, with the best acronym ever: the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act, aka the ACDC Act. For those about to legislate, we salute you. And for those who want to know what this bill does, we…well, listen to the show for an introductory primer.Fifth, and briefly, an update on the status of ACLU v. Mattis, which is the habeas petition the ACLU filed on behalf of the still-unnamed U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant in Iraq.If you stuck around this long, perhaps you do have an appetite for bad humor and unwitty pop culture observations. In that case, you’ll perhaps enjoy an argument about the right ranking of the Star Wars films, where the only disagreement turns out to be which was the very best and which the very worst. Or perhaps you fancy using Star Wars as a teaching foil in class? Stick around for some Law of Interstellar Armed Conflict discussions, not to mention the role of Greedo in illustrating the principles of anticipatory self-defense. Han shot first, and that’s all.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

From September 19, 2024: On April 14, 2022, New York Times technology reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac woke up to a stunning four-word tweet from Elon Musk’s Twitter account: “I made an offer.” Having long covered the technology and social media beat, they read Musk’s terse post as the “unbelievable but inevitable culmination of two storylines we had pursued for a decade as journalists in Silicon Valley.”On today’s episode, Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien spoke to Conger and Mac about the cloak-and-dagger corporate dealings that preceded the offer, as well as the drama that unfolded after the ink dried, which they reported in detail in their new book, “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.” They discussed Musk’s predecessors—Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal—as well as the platform’s troubled history of content moderation, and why the billionaire wanted it all for himself.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

Loren Voss, Public Service Fellow at Lawfare, sits down with Kori Schake, senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Carrie Lee, senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund's Strategic Democracy Initiatives. They discuss how they assess a healthy civil-military relationship, the current state of civil-military affairs, potential unlawful orders, and what we should watch going forward.Lee and Schake outline the frameworks they use to assess civil-military relations in the United States and how to think about unlawful orders and an “unprincipled principal.” Both Schake and Lee agree that the military should not bear the burden of being the solution; fixes must come from civilian leadership in the executive and legislative branches. The group concludes by identifying five indicators everyone should watch going forward to indicate the system isn’t functioning as it should. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.